~ what a lovely day

Tag Archives: USS Constitution

Today we went out into Boston Harbor on our little blue sailboat, The Blue Angel. Of course, we were there to see the USS Constitution, under its own power, for the second time in over one hundred years. We were celebrating the centennial of the War of 1812, where The Constitution got its nickname, “Old Iron Sides.”

We walked down the dock to our boat and boarded, preparing for our adventure. And by prepare, I of course mean I sat and read my Harper’s while my parents got the boat ready. Everything was going swimmingly until we noticed that someone had tipped all of our lines into the water. In case you don’t know, when lines are left in the salt water of Boston Harbor they develop a sort of green-gray scum on them.

Cleaning of the scum.

“Boat bullies,” I said. They had stuck again. We’ll probably never know who was behind it, and we weren’t too bothered because we were setting sail ourselves to get out to the harbor islands to beat out The Constitution.

The USS Constitution. Old Iron Sides. You can just picture her battling pirates, protecting our country from the bad guys, cutting through the waves to protect our freedom. All these thoughts ran through my mind on this, the bicentennial of the War of 1812.

In actuality, however, it was a snail sail. It must have taken 30 minutes to even hoist the main sail. I’m not even one hundred percent sure I even saw the boat move.

Here are some of the pictures I took today. Enjoy! Use your imagination and envision the USS Constitution moving much faster than what I saw.